If you watched the Pirates of the Caribbean, you are familiar with the scene where
the maids are tightening the corset of Elizabeth Swann, played by Kiera Knightly,
and then later faints because the corset was so tight she could not breathe. It is
hard for us to imagine in the 21st century, that barely a hundred years ago, we
women were so fashion-conscious, that we subjected ourselves to what amounted to
‘torture by fashion.’
This x-ray from 1908 show how the corset
narrowed the lower ribcage, making it
difficult to breathe, and displaced
internal
organs,
by
forcing
them
downward, causing ailments like enlarged
livers, spleens, stomach problems, and the
inability to eat more than a few
spoonfuls of food at one sitting.
And, as if not being able to eat or breathe wasn’t enough, along came the ‘hoop’ dresses
that weighed us down with metal sewn into our skirts.
This got me to thinking about how Satan continually tries to restrict us, while making
it look ‘fashionable’ or ‘popular.’ His whole purpose - laid out in Scripture as ‘steal,
kill, and destroy’ - is meant to hamper, or stop, our spiritual breathing, keep us
confined in a garment of his making, that he can draw tighter and tighter, until we
faint and die. In Genesis, God breathe into us ‘the breath of life’ and the Enemy uses
every mechanism he can to stop it.
So, what do you have in your spiritual closet that has you bound, restricted, and
drawn up so that you can’t breathe, can’t move, displaces vital parts of your being,
all while making you think that that is how you are supposed to interact with others
and society as a whole? And, what do you have in your spiritual closet that has you
weighed down like the metal framework of the hoop dress, pulling your shoulders down,
causing you to be a spiritual Quasi Modo, humpbacked and stooped over?
In Luke 13, this type of ‘weight’ is categorized as demonic. Now he was teaching in one of the
synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for
eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called
her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her,
and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.
It’s time to clean out the closet, and get rid of the old ways of thinking, and the things
that are religiously fashionable, but are contrary to God. It’s time to let go of the
spiritual corset and the weight of a demonic framework, and send it back where it
came from. It’s time to get rid of what’s keeping you bound, gasping for breath, and
destroying you from the inside out.
photo credits: corset x-ray | hoop skirt
33